Sigh. We need a map. No, listen: From Twitlonger: I’m accused by @ggreenwald of refusing to be interviewed by Muslim journalists! Here’s what actually happened. I was at a Royal Society meeting to launch the new Stephen Hawking Prize for Science Communication sponsored by @STARMUSfestival, the imaginative conference series that brings scientists together with astronauts Read More…
Month: December 2015
Fleming’s penicillin find couldn’t be published today?
From Vox: Rajendran notes that Alexander Fleming’s simple observation that penicillin mold seemed to kill off bacteria in his petri dish could never be published today, even though it led to the discovery of lifesaving antibiotics. That’s because today’s journals want lots of data and positive results that fit into an overarching narrative (what Rajendran Read More…
ET does not have a “power” area code in the Milky Way?
Not like 212? Better to look in the ‘burbs, the spiral arms. From Science: Observations from NASA’s Kepler space telescope strongly suggest that, “basically every star has a planet, on average, which is pretty mind-boggling,” Forgan says. Because the team’s simulation has many stars in the inner regions of galaxies, many planets form there, and Read More…
Science journalist fed up with “nutrition science”
Is this getting to be a trend? Critical thinking about a lot of the stuff that tumbles down the pike, claiming to be “science”? First there was Nutrition science is not all its cried up to be, now, Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience: The problems with nutrition science begin with how most of its research is conducted. Read More…
Were 32 cave symbols a 30 kya communication system?
From Digventures: Among the elaborate horses, bulls, bears and hunters, there are some other rather less captivating designs – small geometric motifs, etched onto the walls. Until now, they’ve not received much attention. But as it turns out, these humble designs conceal a much more intriguing mystery. Von Petzinger and her photographer-husband visited 52 caves Read More…
Peter Woit on the Paris string theory showdown
Woit is a skeptical Columbia University mathematician. We like him in part because it is a pleasure to read someone who makes the word “skeptical” mean something concrete and useful, as opposed to the war on common sense and evidence-based reason usually marketed under that name. Anyway, further to Has Nature “got” what is at Read More…
Brain regions associated with awareness of self
From ABC (Australia): Who, or what, is ‘I’? It’s a question that humans have obsessed over for millennia. Philosophers continue to debate whether or not the ‘self’ exists while scientists attempt to define the seemingly indefinable. Well, isn’t it a bit like “pain”? Suppose we said: Philosophers continue to debate whether or not ‘pain’ exists Read More…
Clinical genetics mistakes don’t matter when lives don’t
From Atlantic: In one study, Stephen Kingsmore at the National Center for Genome Resources in Santa Fe found that a quarter of mutations that have been linked to childhood genetic diseases are debatable. In some cases, the claims were based on papers that contained extremely weak evidence. In other cases, the claims were plain wrong: Read More…
New Scientist’s about face on the placebo effect
In 2005, New Scientist listed the placebo effect as Number 1 among 13 things that do not make sense. Now they are trying to figure out how to harness it over there: From New Scientist: How you can harness the placebo effect … “It’s hard to believe that sham surgery can produce a long-lasting effect,” Read More…
Thought you’d heard all there was to know about water as unique?
From Nature: The structural origin of anomalous properties of liquid water Water is unique in its number of unusual, often called anomalous, properties. When hot it is a normal simple liquid; however, close to ambient temperatures properties, such as the compressibility, begin to deviate and do so increasingly on further cooling. Clearly, these emerging properties Read More…
Another former student of Leo Kadanoff offers a tribute
From the Inbox: One of my good memories from grad school days comes from a time in 1968 when I loaded up some fellow students and drove to another campus to spend an afternoon with Leo Kadanoff and take in his colloquium talk. I was impressed by the clarity of his talk and by his Read More…
Why life isn’t like a Mandelbrot set
We’ve all heard about Mandelbrot sets – fantastically complex structures that can be created from a single equation and a very short program. Why, some people ask, couldn’t life be like that? And wouldn’t it be more mathematically elegant if it was? Physics types are especially prone to feel this way. Many of them might Read More…
Royal Society to meet on paradigm shift in evolution?
So Suzan Mazur, author of The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing “the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin,” tells us in Huffington Post: Sir Paul Nurse has just completed his five-year term as president of the Royal Society. The Nobel laureate and molecular biologist has been succeeded by Nobel laureate Sir Venkatraman “Venki” Ramakrishnan, who is a Read More…
Kadanoff: Information a primary topic 21st C science
A tribute to his dissertation advisor Leo Kadanoff (1937–2015) from Bill Dembski: I came to know of Leo on a lark, or by providence, depending on one’s view… With dissertations in math, two happy things can happen: (1) an advisor proposes a problem and the student solves it, writes it up, and gets his degree; Read More…
Eureka! Christmas spirit located in brain…
From Neuroscience News: Understanding how the Christmas spirit works could be a powerful tool in treating the ‘bah humbug’ syndrome. Oh no! Stop them before it’s too late! The world needs more of the Bah! Humbug! Sydrome. The study involved 10 participants who celebrated Christmas, and 10 healthy participants who lived in the same area, Read More…